


A Stitch in Time Saves 9 (Who’s the companion.)

by Yug_Imagiro



Category: Dr. Who, Lilo & Stitch (2002)
Genre: Paradox Lost, Time Travel, after the war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 00:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12377313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yug_Imagiro/pseuds/Yug_Imagiro
Summary: Plot bunnies and puns go hand in hand.  I was thinking about the "Stitch in time" line and the story idea just jumped out of my head like the Doctor out of the TARDIS.





	A Stitch in Time Saves 9 (Who’s the companion.)

Standard disclaimer: I don’t own anything thing here, either in the past, present, or future... And I doubt I own it in any relevant parallel timeline either.

 

The TARDIS was wounded just like its only passenger, pilot, and friend. It had managed to get them clear of the destruction of Gallifrey and the entire home system, but at a price. Both of them had been grievously wounded. The TARDIS was already repairing itself, but the warrior that had fought so hard lay dying on the control room floor. 

The ship keened as his life signs faded. After what he had done, he wished for death anyway. He had spent lifetimes becoming the ultimate champion for peace only to become the best killer ever born in the span of a few short months. He had become so good that no one remained. They were all dead, friend and foe alike, all had perished by his hand in a last ditch effort to end the war that was tearing time itself apart. But for what? He had changed form; from a man of peace into a the universe’s greatest weapon. He had in one act killed not one, but two races; all to save countless others. He had become a bigger monster than any he had ever fought. He had become the oncoming storm that swept all life from Gallifrey and the systems that surround it. 

Tears welled up and poured down the sides of his face. He looked at the hands that had snuffed those lives out and cried out in anguish. The pain in his hearts was echoed by the TARDIS and her dimming displays. He knew that he was causing his greatest, and most loyal, companion to share in his pain, and it was like a fresh wound on his soul. He fervently wished that she didn’t have to feel his pain, but he also knew just how closely they were linked. His hand stroked the beam next to where he lay and he let the tears fall for both of them.

He didn’t know how long he had laid there before he managed to sit up one more time and looked at his tattered outfit. Pieces of it had belonged to earlier versions of himself, but he really doubted if his next version would keep any of it. The outfit, like his current body, was quite worn out. He tried to stand, but passed out and fell hard; he wound up landing on his back, and rolling on the deck as the last vestiges of consciousness left him. His body lay still as the TARDIS hurled wildly through space and time. That’s when the change began. It started with his skin which started to glow, and soon the light that suffused throughout his tissues lit his body like a miniature sun inside the confines of his clothes and signified that the regeneration had begun.

 

From the galaxy’s point of view the Earth is a rather backwards world with little to see, but it had been the Doctor’s adopted world for centuries. He had literally spent lifetimes on his favorite little ball of water and islands of various sizes. So it was with no surprise that the TARDIS brought him to a charming island that she had been to so many times before... Just not the one that the Doctor usually picked. 

The door opened and the same man in a different face looked out at the sandy tropical beach and palm trees that lined the shore, then the dapper man looked down at his nice shoes, and then he took another one look out at the sun, and then at his leather jacket, and then he felt how humid the air was, and ruffled his nice warm wool slacks, and frumped mightily. “Right planet, WRONG island.” He turned around and closed the door. The blue police box that was sitting on the beach as people walked past it as it sat there, well it just sat there. And sat there. And sat there... 

The same man walked out, in the same outfit, and looked at his home/spaceship/time machine/companion as it just sat there. He knew better than to kick the TARDIS. The last time he did that she locked him out for a week. On Tanterra Prime no less; where the days were forty hours long, and the week had ten days.

“Kaua’i? Why here? We haven’t been here since it was Taua’i. I guess it still is, but why here?” He remembered helping stop an invasion of Solians from taking over before young Kaumuali’i could gather his forces to repel them. The place sure had changed in a couple hundred years. The massive four armed blue warmachines had wanted to use the island as a beachhead to invade the planet. He smiled as he remembered how Romana had danced.... The smile, and the feelings behind it died quickly as he just as readily recalled how Romana had died so tragically at Arcadia. He had lost so much. He opened the door, and soon reemerged wearing a garish shirt, and the water polo shorts that he had picked up on a lark the last time he was with the Brigadier. Looking at his watch, he was glad to see that it was still a few years before Alistair was supposed to die. The ghost of a smile reappeared on his face as he adjusted his sunhat. That would have been one too many dead friends for such a nice day.

He walked aimlessly, slowly moving down the beach looking out at the sea. The nearly spent waves lapped at his feet as his path straddled the tide line. The memories of how it used to look, and how it was now made for a strange overlay. None of the trees were in the same places, but they were still the same kinds, so it was almost as if someone had shuffled them around. The rocks were smaller, or gone altogether. He knew he was getting morose, but everything here reminded him of the past; which was par for the course for a time lord. Had the TARDIS brought him here to get it out of his system? That wasn’t like her. True, she usually took him to where he needed to be, but she usually took him where he was needed to save the day. Never as he could recall to somewhere this peaceful... A small child exploded from the brush and ran towards the shore. He was startled, but not as much as he was when a miniature Solian charged after her. The child was fast, but the Solian was faster, but the Doctor was faster still. He knew the Solian’s biggest weakness. His Sonic Screwdriver was in his hand, and the strongest setting was quickly dialed in to it by memory. He hit the Solian right before it caught the girl, and that when things got weird. And for a Time Lord, weird was really weirder than weird. The creature collapsing to the sand and starting to roll and writhe, that he expected. The raucous laughter, he did not. Nor the creature to be calling him very naughty names in Galactic Standard.

Stitch had been looking forward to their day at the beach, and he had almost caught Lilo when some Caghtaphouth had Hartinopped him. “STOP PLEASE!”

The Doctor noticed the small girl kicking his shin with some gusto, and the creature laughing at an attack that should have stunned a full sized Solian. He turned off the sonic beam, and looked at the creature. “I’m sorry, I mistook you for a Solian.”

Stitch caught his breath and pointed at his face. “You’re blind as a rilfing hifol you vipnir! Two keffing eyes, not four. You yaing dofir Bodisnatchi!”

“Hey! Watch your language, there are kids present.”

“She wouldn’t understand tha...” He looked at Lilo, who’s face had gone both slack and pale, then back at the Man in the goofy clothes.

“Did I mention the translation circuit I have that’s connected to my ship?”

Stitch waved his hand in front of Lilo’s stunned face. “No, didn’t.”

Lilo shook her head as the shock wore off. “Excuse me, I have to go throw up.” She immediately ran for the grass.

A very large and equally goofily-dressed Kweltikwan plowed through the undergrowth. “I hear sonic veapon? Is everting dokie okie?”

“Yes Jumba. Um... We okay.”

The Doctor looked at the diminutive creature, and the alien with the sharp fashion sense, and things started to click. “Doctor Jumba Jookiba! Wait... Wait... The All-mighty GF stuck you here? Isn’t there a law about leaving evil geniuses unsupervised?”

“JUMBA! JUMBA! Why did you run off, I was still half way up that ladder you were holding!” Everyone looked as a three legged creature with a bucket on his head seemed to collide with every tree, and root as he stumbled their way.

“Pleakley, please to be taking bucket off of head.”

He did, and upon seeing the Doctor he pulled it back down. “Um, Jumba. Is that man holding what I think he’s holding?”

“Da, it is Sonic Screwdriver.” Jumba scratched his head. “Have not seen one of those in a while.”

“Oh, a Sonic Screwdriver, I thought it was a ‘probe’. I hate probes. Humans keep wanting to use them for some reason.”

“I may need to go throw up again.” Lilo knew that Pleakley used the internet far too much.

The Doctor put the Sonic Screwdriver, which in all honesty could be used to probe things, away quietly. “Agent Pleakley, weren’t you the same Pleakley that wrote that book on the Earth Mosquito?”

Pleakley’s eye stalk shot up and looked at the newcomer with surprise. “Yes I am! Did you read it?”

“I actually own a copy.” He didn’t tell the misguided scientist that it had been a gift from an Americian UNIT agent he had befriended years ago when they had thwarted the GF’s attempts to eradicate the Earth by telling them.... “You wouldn’t happen to know a large man that goes by the name of Cobra?”

Pleakley practically preened. “Mr. Bubbles is one of our best friends here on Earth. He introduced me to the breeding ground that I use to study the elusive insects.”

The perception filter that the TARDIS used in conjunction with her chameleon circuit kept most people from running into her or even noticing her, but one man stood before her and tipped down his mirrored sunglasses as he examined her. He ran his hand across the door and looked at the sign on its face. “Police box, my Aunt Fanny.” His phone was out and an old number was dialed without even looking at it. 

“UNIT HQ, Agent Pembrook, how may I direct your call Agent Bubbles?” The chipper voice on the other end was well known to Special Agent Cobra Bubbles (Retired). Grace Pembrooke was an out of this world secretary, and by that he meant that she was an alien from another world. 

“Hi Grace, tell the Boss that The Doctor is on holiday in my neck of the woods.” A full five seconds of silence made him check his phone. He still had a good signal. “Grace?”

“THE Doctor? REALLY!”

“Agent Pembrooke?”

“I’m sorry, but he’s... He’s....”

“He’s THE Doctor.”

“Yes!”

“Grace, if you dissolve into a puddle of goo again, what will the Boss say?” Grace’s abilities as a shapeshifter were amazing, but her ability to hold any one form if she got distracted meant that she was usually a semi-humanoid blob that was the best secretary the Boss had ever had instead of the worst field agent ever.

“She’ll tell me that dumb joke about ‘Pulling myself together’ again. But really Cobra, The Doctor never shows up unless something big is about to happen, and with you-know-who as your little pet project...” The Pelekai clan and their rather otherworldly ‘ohana, or family, had become his primary mission here after he was semi-un-retired from UNIT. He still was able to do his day job of being a social worker, which he really did enjoy, and since he had already been tasked with keeping an eye on Kaua’i’s most interesting immigrants before the Pelekai family grew so large, this was almost normal for him. 

He smiled and put his hand on the TARDIS’ side and felt the slight tingle that was her way of saying hello to old friends. “Don’t worry, this is one problem child she knows I can deal with.” Ten years as a companion when he was a little more than a child himself had made the problems of the world seem small in comparison. When the call went out to any of the former Doctor’s companions, he had been transferred out of the CIA to join the newly formed UNIT in a heartbeat. Even still, he had never thought he would hear the sound of her materialization cycle again. He knocked on the door, but the buzz in his head told him that the Doctor wasn’t in. The mental image of the nearby beach popped into his head and he nodded to the TARDIS. “Thanks again old friend.”

He walked away from what could loosely be said was his adopted mother. The Doctor and the US army had found him when a Cybermen squad had invaded Washington DC back in 1959. He and his sitter Mary had been captured, and had watched as his parents and many others including Mary had been turned into Cybermen. By the time the Doctor and the team from the army saved him it had been a nightmare of unimaginable horrors. The Doctor had pulled him out of the cell he had been hiding in and carried him out into the night. The big hat and wild hair, had done little to hide the sadness in those eyes of his. The sacred child that Cobra had been was so touched by the pain in those eyes that he hugged the stranger and wouldn’t let go. 

It would be ten years and many adventures later before he would leave the man in the funny hat with his long scarf and coat and endless supplies of Jelly Babies behind to join the Army that had also rescued him. The Doctor had not been happy about him joining the army, but he had understood. He had dropped by after Sargent Bubbles joined the CIA and even managed to help him stop the Galactic Federation by.... Mosquitos.... Cobra ran towards the beach, and hoped that the Doctor hadn’t run in to his other little family yet.

Grace belied her name as she slid past the door so she could enter her boss’ office faster. Dr. Liz Shaw-Tylor sat behind her desk looking at her computer where a video call from Brigadier Winifred Bambera had been interrupted by her usual unusual arrival. “Ma’ams.... The Doctor is in Hawaii!”

For a group that was used to alien evasions, and monsters from the deep, a simple comment like this produced a response that seemed to indicate the worst. “Dr. Shaw, do you want me to scramble a brigade, or just a strike team? I can have the Americans send some of their naval units.”

“They do have a few around here, don’t they. No, let’s just send in a recon unit. We don’t want to spook the locals, or tempt Murphy.” She sighed. It would have to be Bubbles... He always seemed to be Murphy’s special project. Getting The Doctor and Bubbles together again... “Oh bloody hell! Isn’t that the island with that miniature warmachine on it?”

“Yes, I think her name is Lilo.” Grace filled in. She had met the Pelekai family, and she could see why the other social workers had run in fear.

“No, the other one. That’s his pet human.”

“Isn’t that against he law? One sentient can’t have another as a pet.”

“Grace, it’s a figure of speech.”

“You humans have more figures of speech than I have figures!”

As a child Cobra had often wonder how The Doctor managed to elude people he didn’t want to run into, but the ones that needed to find him always managed to do so. He had explained it as a function of the perception filter the TARDIS had. The closer The Doctor was to her, the better it worked, but even then it had it’s limits. People who were actively looking for him could see through the filter. And what was worse was the little known fact that anyone that knew about the filter was immune to it. And since the TARDIS was helping him, it didn’t take long for him to find the signs of a struggle, and a wide path that could have only been made by a certain scientist of his acquaintance. He was not in the least bit surprised when the return path led almost directly towards a rather deceptively ramshackle home. He knocked on the door and a strange man opened it and looked up at him. It took the man a couple of seconds to recover from his shock but Cobra knew who he was when he smiled a similar but different goofy smile and asked him two questions. The first was: “Didn’t you used to have hair?” and the second was: “Could you put me down, I think you’re crushing my ribs?” Actually to be perfectly honest, Cobra knew before he finished the first question.

Nani drove up the driveway and noticed that they seemed to have guests from the music that was coming from inside the house. She could hear Pleakley and Lilo belting out “Suspicious Minds” while someone was playing the drums and they had a better than usual piano accompaniment. Wait... They didn’t have a piano. She hurried up the steps and looked inside to seed Jumba playing drums on glowing disks while.... Cobra Bubbles was playing the piano on her table... She just shook her head and went to the back door.

Nani Pelekai had seen a lot of things in the year since they adopted Stitch, and the others. She thought that she would have gotten used to having things that would suddenly pop up from nowhere, and strange creatures from outer space, but the man sitting on her couch next to Stitch was so normal that he freaked her out more than the others. The music stopped and she was suddenly hit by a very happy Lilo. “Nani, you will never guess what I just found out!”

“Mr. Bubbles can play piano, and Pleakley can sing.”

“Hey! You guessed, no fair! But that’s not all, Mr. Doctor here is an old friend of Mr. Bubbles, and he has a screwdriver that tickles Stitch and can fix the toaster!”

“That’s impossible. Even Jumba couldn’t fix th..” two slices of toast popped out of the toaster in a perfect example of her day.

“What’s wrong?” The gentleman in the ugly shirt stood up and she could see that he was almost as tall as Mr. Bubbles, but much thinner.

“She lost her job again, but it’s not her fault. Mr. Kauniki is remodeling after Mrs. Hasagawa used the drive thru they didn’t have. ” Cobra Bubbles had heard about the general store being closed for repairs. In fact, that was the reason he had come out this way in the first place. “Small world! But don’t worry, I’m not here to give you a hard time. I’m here to give you this.” He handed her a card. It was the business card for one of the local surf shops.

“What’s this for?”

“Lou owes me a favor. I told him you need a job.”

“Captain Lou... El Rhino?” Lilo grabbed the card from her sister’s hand.

“Hey isn’t that harsh?” The Doctor knew that some cultures were none too kind, and he unconsciously rubbed his own brand new nose.

Lilo hopped up on the couch and filled in the good Doctor. “No, the shop is called El Rhino. Captain Lou’s nose looks more like Mr. Bubbles here. He’s from the mainland, but he moved here because of his wife.”

“His wife?”

“She’s from here, but she used to live in New York, and worked as a flight attendant, but she didn’t like flying that much.”

“Was her husband a pilot?”

“No, he’s piano player that likes playing Captain and Tennille music.

“So he wears the hat?”

“Yes, but don’t tell him it’s too small, I think he wears it to hide something.”

“Okay thanks for the warning. But what about his wife?

“Tinnille?”

“No the daughter of the mother that has the hotel.

Lilo rolled her eyes. “NO... Her name is Tinnille, that’s how they met. Anyway, she has a mother...”

“I should hope so.” This got him a funny look from Lilo, and many rolled eyes from the others.

“Anyway, her mother owns a hotel, and she needed cabbages.”

“Cabbages?”

“The big ones that look ugly, but taste good in soup, yeah. Only you know how they smell funny if you don’t cook them right?”

“Yes.”

“Well her daughter is allergic to cabbages, so she had to get her husband...”

“The Captain?”

“Yes, but he not a Captain anymore. You see he gave that up because he LOVES his mother-in-law’s tuna fish sandwiches.”

“That makes sense.”

Jumba coughed as he was sipping his drink. “It does?”

“Of course. Bad combo. Can’t sing to crowds with tuna breath.”

Lilo raised her hands in the air and pointed them towards The Doctor. “Right, exactly! Now where was I?”

The Doctor continued for her. “The Captain opened up the shop to pay for someone to harvest the cabbages that his mother-in-law grows for her hotel. So that way he could eat her sandwiches instead of singing for his supper.” Everyone, even Stitch, turned to face The Doctor. “What? Am I right?”

Pleakley pointed from him to Lilo and back again with his mouth failing to make anything resembling a word until Mr. Bubbles patted him on the back and he stopped even that. “You’re right, it’s that just no one here has been able to understand one of Lilo’s stories before, let alone get to the end before she did.”

Lilo grabbed The Doctor by the leg. “Can we keep him too?”

Cobra Bubbles looked at the man he once knew, and smiled. “No one keeps the Doctor. An old friend of our’s used to say he was like an oncoming storm. When you see him coming the only thing you can hope to do is to survive the experience.” Everyone but the Doctor and Mr. Bubbles looked at Stitch.

Stitch upon noticing the attention wondered why they were looking at him like that. “What?”

Down on the beach a very large surfer came in from a rather nice day of surfing and enjoying the sun. He set his oversized board down and pulled out the tarp that he used as his beach towel. His skin tended to bead the water, and due to his lack of hair, he mostly just needed it to lay down on the hot sand and not get it in places Momma Gantu wouldn’t want her only son to be showing in public. He knelt down to rest in the warm sand and to let the heat take the soreness away from his muscles. Every day here was restful. Every day here was peaceful. And every day here was boring as a Council Meeting that went on forever. Gantu. Was. Bored! 

He looked up at the clouds and wished that he had something to do. No job, no responsibilities, and no purpose, was slowly driving him nuts. He had been exiled, not for failing to catch Experiment 626, but for endangering a human. At least that was what the official report had said. And maybe he had gone a little overboard in trying to catch the trog. And maybe he had underestimated the sapience level of the locals... He watched two humans toss a tiny disk back and forth with very little skill... One just hit the other in the face, and they both laughed.

Okay, maybe he didn’t underestimate all of them. In fact it was thanks to a UGF perception filter that they couldn’t even figure out the fact that he wasn’t human. But that wasn’t unusual either. He had run into three aliens here on this tiny island alone, and that wasn’t counting 626 and his collection of misfits. Two Randians disguised as tourists, and a Hommmini that was doing a fair imitation of a rock on one of the beaches. He had traded some stories with Grit the Hommmini, and watched in amusement as the Randians fled in terror at the sight of a roast pig on a spit. He did see the resemblance, but pork just tasted so good. And it smelled... Wait... What was that smell?

He opened one eye and scanned his surroundings. Nothing seemed out of... That Blue shack hadn’t been there yesterday, and it smelled of fresh ionization. The kind that charged particles gave off. He knew that he had just started to relax, but he wouldn’t be able to until this mystery had been solved.

The two UNIT agents that had been ordered to shadow Gantu noted his sudden change in attitude. The juice bar they ran on the beach was one of the only ones on the island that carried the strawberry rhubarb soda that Mr. Gantu seemed to be nuts for. So when he left without his usual six-pack, they knew something was up. Agents Jacob and Marley had received the heads up from HQ about The Doctor, and the potential for trouble, and were acting accordingly. Both grabbed their personal sidearms, and gear, from the locked trunk under the counter. “Robert, why don’t you follow him. I’ll close up and catch up.”

The agent that went by the name Robert Marley; who was actually born in south London, and hated reggae nodded. “John, if this yob tosses it in the grinder with The Doctor, keep your head down. Nora and the kids need you.”

“ The bloke may look like a rugby team’s dream, but he does have a brain. The Doc can work with that.”

 

Gantu looked at the shed. It said something in the funny script that the humans used. His scanner was in his van, so he simply tapped on the door. The sound was far too solid for a simple wooden shack. The smell of ionized particles was much stronger now that he was standing right next to it, and that’s when he realized that he was the only one noticing the shack. A quick tap on each side of the shack told him all he needed to know. Whatever this was, it was not a normal human building.

He walked back to his van and opened the top. Jumba had nicknamed it the Sardine-mobile, but it got him and his board where he needed to go. The hand scanner looked like something the Swiss Army would have made if they built scientific equipment, but it did the trick. He flipped out a few devices, and moved the dials and switches like he had been taught. The device was easy to use, and the human computing devices could even be interfaced with it. He was scanning the area around the beach as he walked to wards the shack when he picked up his first cronoton. Soon enough he was getting nervous because of the readings he was getting. He was looking at a time machine. And not just any time machine, a Time Lord’s time machine. And just as his luck would have it, all the sensors and records were telling him that there was only one person this could belong to. Five different images with a note that his race changed bodies from time to time, meant that somewhere on this island one of the most wanted beings in the UGF was walking free. He rubbed his hand across his face and winced. He bet his last can of fizzy drink that he knew just where the Great Destroyer would be.

The agents watched him leave and looked at which way he was headed. John started swearing in French, Armenian, Latvian, Mandrin, Korean, and a language that Agent Marley didn’t catch. “What was that last one?”

“It’s from this new sci-fi show I like watching.”

“I hate sci-fi... Reminds me too much of my day job.”

Gantu noticed the humans that were in the woods by their smell, and he also caught the odor of gun oil, and the bug repellant that was favored by the tourists. So there were armed men looking for the either the Great Destroyer, or that abomination 626. Either way, his only problem was the decision to join them, or get the glory for himself. His standard sidearm was too big to conceal, but he had managed to find an old back up pistol in the wreckage of his ship. He pulled it out of the pink fanny pack that had to be the human’s best invention ever, and worked on sneaking up on the trog and his little family of misfits.

Sargent Morre could not believe his ears. The Lieutenant had just ordered them to pull back and let the giant armed creature head towards the small house. He knew The Doctor’s reputation... But really? The guy (assuming he was a he!) was easily sixteen feet tall, and he looked like a whale, a shark, and an elephant had been combined into one creature. 

 

Gantu noted the retreating men, and smiled. They must have noticed him. Surely Agent Bubbles must have warned... He felt a tap on his hip. He turned slowly to see the last two men he expected. Mr. Jacob, and Mr. Marley from the juice bar standing there beside him. He also was surprised to see Bobby holding a very lethal looking rifle, and John holding a six-pack of fizzy drink. “How did you two sneak up on me?”

Bobby looked at him with one of those odd looks humans had. “You don’t seem to be surprised that we’re armed, but that bugs you?”

“I am an alien to your world, and I’m hostile to one of your other refugees. I figured someone was watching me.”

John smiled at Bobby. “See, I told you he was a smart one.” He pointed to his nose before continuing. “But what you didn’t get was the fact that you have been around us so much that you are nose-blind to us. So can we talk this out, or do we have to let the heavies stun you into oblivion, and then continue this in a secure location?”

Gantu looked at the two humans that he had mistaken for simple merchants and laughed. “I will let you have the honor of catching the Great Destroyer then.”

“Who?”

“Great Destroyer... The time lord that nearly caused my people to become slaves to the Fordarians by destroying our entire defense fleet. If it hadn’t been for the intervention of the UGF we would have been slaves for sure. If you are bringing this many people to catch him, he must have done something far worse here. So what did he do?”

 

“So there I was trapped by these giants and their invasion fleet. They had planned on a surprise attack on the peace conference they were about to attend, and they made the mistake of leaving me in a locked cargo bay instead of a brig when they caught me snooping around. You see it seems they didn’t have a brig as they never took prisoners.”

“So what did you do?” Lilo and Stitch sat on the couch with The Doctor while the rest sat around the front room in the various chairs that they had acquired from other parts of the house. The whole scene looked like a party if it wasn’t for the armed men in military uniforms that were sprinkled around the room trying very hard to not ogle The Doctor, or his hosts. 

“I had already accessed their computer and rewrote their command pathways before they caught me. When the fleet tried to open fire it caused every ship in the fleet to activated their self-destruct. The door to the cargo bay automatically opened, and I ran for the TARDIS.”

“That is not how our history tells it.” Captain Gantu sat between four very heavily armed UNIT officers with his hands on his knees.

“Yes, a rather nice young officer filled me and Cobra in when we had a run in. It seems your government had the temerity to blame the whole thing on me, and say that I was the one that tried to sabotage the peace conference. If the United Galactic Federation wasn’t so hide bound to their rules they would have seen through the ruse, but all they saw was the destruction of an entire fleet. So what did they do? They charged me in absentia with twenty-five-thousand counts of destruction of government property. And since it was my word against theirs, and only they showed up...”

“You blew up a fleet?” The awe in Stitch’s eyes was rather uncomfortable for the others.

“Technically, they blew up their own fleet. I just ‘helped’ them do it.” Stitch started cooing and The Doctor looked a little uncomfortable. “That wasn’t a good thing Stitch. People could have gotten hurt.”

“And if you hadn’t?” Lilo posed the one kind of question that The Doctor dreaded the most. The one that called for an honest answer.

“If I hadn’t, then a lot of people would have died for no good reason.”

Gantu looked at the being that was the nightmare creature for generations of his race. Parents would scare their spawn with threats of feeding them to the Great Destroyer. Ripping off the myth, and seeing the man, he understood why he had done what he had done. To stop a great threat was something that he himself would have done before he had been ‘retired’. “So, you are not a monster.”

The Doctor’s next answer shocked everyone in the room. “Oh I am. But not the kind you’re thinking of. I have shattered worlds, and burned the sky. Creatures will flee at the mere mention of my name, and others will try and kill me for just existing. I go into the places where mortals fear to tread, and look into the darkness that looks back at me as an equal, and I poke at things that shouldn’t be touched. Death follows me like an unseen companion.” He looked at Cobra Bubbles. “Others have walked with me, but never for too long. I am a trouble magnet, and a harbinger of doom.” He patted Stitch on the head. “I have lived hundreds of years, and known thousands of beings, and saved trillions, but I weep for the billions that I have failed.”

“Ohana?”

“My family.... They are gone. Some to time, some to the ends of space, some to oblivion.” He looked at Gantu and smiled, but the smile was not a happy one. Bubbles knew how sad he could get, and he knew why. “I run into them from time to time, but not as often as I would like.”

Stitch could see that The Doctor was going to a dark place. He knew the dark all too well. “Wait! I be back!” He ran off so fast that two of the UNIT men started to go for their sidearms before the others stopped them. In less than a minute, Stitch was back with all four arms full of flowers. Everyone got quiet as he went to work, his hands a blur he soon had managed to make a rather presentable Lei formed from plants acquired from Nani’s flower garden and the local woods. “When first came here, all I was was darkness and chaos. Lilo and my new ohana showed me light. When I was... wild... this helped.” He held out the Lei to The Doctor.

The Doctor knew what the Leis represented, and for Stitch to make it in front of everyone made it even more special. He took it from Stitch’s hands and put it on. It wasn’t his first Lei by hundreds of years, but it meant more to him than any he could remember. He put it on and smiled at the tiny creature. “I need to return the favor. You pulled me back from the edge. That’s why I have companions. I also have a time machine. Is there anything that I can do for you?”

Stitch tilted his head and scratched for a second before running off again. He came back with a slightly singed picture. “I am the reason this is broken. What can you do?”

Lilo shot up when Stitch handed The Doctor the picture. “Could you?”

The Doctor was about to answer when Stitch beat him to it. “No he can’t. If he did, we wouldn’t be ohana.”

“You are right, I also can’t change events that have already happened. They are fixed points as soon as I learn about them. I don’t know how they died, but if I had been there before I met you I could have saved them without changing the time line too much. Now...”

“Paradox, is like having two of you in same place?” Jumba laughed at his own joke.

The Doctor nodded, although he didn’t want to tell the mad scientist, or the others, how many times he had actually run into himselves before.

“But you can go back and make copy, yes?”

He looked at the picture in his hand. “Yes I could.”

Lilo looked at the picture, and smiled. “If you can go back, can we?”

“That wouldn’t be advisable.”

“Do you know where I used to hide that picture?”

“No.” He looked at the sweet innocent look on Lilo’s face and realized what she was trying to pull, but smiled anyway. “Ask your sister.” The smile vanished much faster than it had appeared.

Mr. Bubbles laughed. “That never worked for me either.”

Stitch put his hand on Lilo’s shoulder. “I know where picture is. I get for you.”

“That abomination is going to travel with you? You do know that he is banished to this planet.”

“And we will be staying on this planet. Would you like to come along?”

“You’re joking right? I don’t know how you and Mr. Bubbles fit in there. I am too big to fit in there by myself.”

“Dimensional fold, or subspace pocket?” 

The Doctor looked at Jumba and nodded. “Something like that.” Actually it was nothing like that, but he wasn’t about to give away that secret. 

“So bigger inside, yes?”

“Yes Stitch, it is.”

“But I am still bigger than the door.”

“Crawl through?”

“No Lilo, I have something better in mind.” This time when The Doctor smiled there was no sadness in it, but Gantu did not feel relieved. If anything he felt more worried by that enigmatic smile than the other one.

Everyone stood outside the TARDIS while The Doctor went inside to “Grab a little something.” They didn’t have to wait long. He was out in less than five minutes carrying a small grey necklace.

“Sorry that took so long, I had to go to the wardrobe room. This thing was buried under a suit of Havidrian Paddle Armor.”

Gantu looked at the necklace that The Doctor handed him and replied. “Don’t you mean Battle Armor?”

“No... Paddle Armor. It’s worn for weddings. You see they like to.... Oh wait kids present, never mind just put on the necklace.”

He looked at the thing in his hands and snorted. “Like your door, it is too small.”

“So is your brain. Do you think he would be giving to you defective junk? Heh?”

“Jumba, I trust you less than I trust him.”

“Mr. Gantu, will you please just put it on.” Cobra Bubbles was starting to feel his blood pressure rise.

“Fine, but it won’t... fit?” As he put it on, he could feel the necklace get longer, and his vision blur. When his vison cleared he noticed that Mr. Bubbles was now his height. “You grew?”

“No, you shrank. Don’t worry it’s a Gallifrian Glamor Charm. The Time Lords used them to communicate with races that are much larger, or smaller than normal. It made them less intimidating. You will return to normal as soon as you take it off. But fair warning, the TARDIS has control of the lock. If you try to take it off inside her, it won’t release. Outside you can take it off easily enough, and it will even stop working if it runs out of power; but if you try to take it off inside her it won’t release.”

“Why would the...” The sudden image of him growing inside a small rom until he crushed himself flashed in his mind. “Oh, stupid question. Did the ship just do that?”

The Doctor smiled. “Yes, and she has a name.” He opened the door with a flourish. “Welcome to the TARDIS. It’s short for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.”

Stitch looked at the outside before entering. “It like me. Big thing in Small package.”

The Doctor listened to his ship laugh at their newest guest’s comment. “You know Stitch, I don’t think anyone has ever put it that way before.”

“Thank you... Do we have to leave Lilo?”

“Yes I’m afraid. Time travel carries many perils, it not a good place for children.”

“Have you tried?”

“Yes and it scared me more than you can imagine.” Mr. Bubbles was not the only child that had accompanied him, but he would probably be the last.

Stitch thought to the time he nearly lost Lilo. “I can.” He twiddled his fingers for a moment. “Okay, we go?”

“Yes.”

Outside Lilo watched through tear-filed eyes as her best friend was about to go on a adventure without her. She knew that Mr. Bubbles said that the time machine would only be gone a few seconds, but she felt like a piece of her was being ripped out. She just didn’t have the words to explain what Stitch meant to her. Since her parents died no one, not even her sister, had just accepted her for her. There were always rules, and conditions, and expectations... She knew that life was like that but she had only just turned seven, and it seemed unfair for her to have to grow up so fast. A gentle hand caressed her head. She looked up to see Mr. Bubbles standing next to her. “He was like that to me.”

“What?”

“The Doctor. He was my Angel when I need him. I spent quite a few years traveling with him when he was wearing a different form.”

“He switches bodies?”

“No, when one wears out he is reborn into a new one. Like a Phoenix from Greek mythology.”

“Nani read me ‘n Stitch, a book on that. Does that mean he goes all explody?”

Cobra laughed. “I never saw it happen, but he said it was something a little less flashy.”

“Well I don’t want Lilo anywhere near him when he does. Why does this unit thing let him muck with time?”

“UNIT. United Nations Intelligence Team. We’re a select group, comprised of the best and brightest from every nation, all joined together to fight threats from outer space and other dimensions. And as to why... He was one of the founders, and he has saved this world and others more times than we can count.”

“Does he seek out danger for kick or something?”

“No, its not that simple.”

“It never is.”

As Cobra was looking at Nani he felt the familiar tingle of the TARDIS’ laughter. He also could feel the perception filter slip away. He had been distracted, and that was enough for even him to be fooled by them. He looked down to see his hand rubbing empty air. “No, it is never that simple.” Nani, still hadn’t noticed, but he knew that if they didn’t get back soon... No, even if they did.. there would still be trouble to deal with. He sent a telepathic message to the ship as it vanished. ‘Take care of her!’

Moments earlier, Lilo had watched as the door to The Doctor’s ship opened up on its own. Mr. Bubbles and her sister were talking about something so she walked towards the open door to look inside. It was bigger on the inside just like Mr. Bubbles had said but she wasn’t ready for how much. A mental image of her walking through the door appeared in her mind. She looked up at the ship with a puzzled expression. “Did you just do that?” When a floating gold halo appeared over the image of the ship in her mind, she knew that she had just been invited in by someone as mischievous as she was.. 

The Doctor was explaining how he traveled through time when he noticed that Stitch wasn’t paying any attention at all. He was looking at a very scared Lilo standing at the doorway. “The ship said I could some along for the ride.” Stitch rushed to her side and hugged his best friend.

The weary Time Lord laughed. “It seems that she’s pulled that trick before.” He looked at the strange looks the others were giving him and waved his hands in the air. “The TARDIS that is. That’s how we first met. You see, she chose me, not the other way around. Well, since we’re already moving, I guess you’ll just have to come along.”

Gantu surprised everyone by laughing as well. “Somehow I just knew we were going to be bringing her.”

Stitch looked at Lilo, and then at The Doctor. He had been chosen like Stitch had? “Did she rescue you?”

The Doctor thought back to the dreadfully boring life that most Gallifreyians led, and realized that while it would have been easier it would have been worse than death. And without their ‘meddling’ the Time War would have happened earlier. And he knew it would have been worse if he hadn’t slowed down the Daleks. “Yes Stitch, she did. More than once, to be honest.” She had saved him from the biggest killer of Time Lords. For an immortal race, the worst fear was that of the unending boredom that came with knowing everything, and never experiencing anything they couldn’t control, command, or even undo if the need was great enough... Or trivial enough for some. 

“So when are we going?” Gantu looked around at all of the equipment in the room, and wondered what any of it did. He understood enough to know that he was way out of his depths.

“I figure that if we appear a few days before you arrived, we should be able to make a copy of the picture.”

“That won’t work.” Lilo struggled to look at the controls. She pulled her hand back from one dial when The Doctor shooed her away.

“Why not?” 

“Because I was sick for a whole week before Stitch arrives. And Pudge didn’t get his sandwiches.”

“W..” 

The Doctor was about to ask when Gantu jumped to the end of the story. “Pudge controls the weather. So a large storm must have swept through.”

“No are you lolo, I was sick in bed, and I would’a seen you trying to get my picture. And besides you would have stepped on all the sandwiches.”

“Stepped on the sandwiches?” Gantu said this with all that patience he could muster.

“I had to put them on the floor, because Nani wouldn’t let me go out.”

The former captain put a hand to his head and shook his head. “I am either coming down with something myself, or going off the reef. That actually makes sense.”

The Doctor smiled again. Gantu wasn’t sure if he liked that smile either.

Cobra could see that Nani had finally calmed down after she noticed that Lilo had slipped away, but getting there had been neither easy or quick. It had taken quite a bit of Cobra Bubbles’ considerable talents to calm her down, but she finally managed to breathe deeply before asking him the one question he had hoped that she wouldn’t. “So, you are not JUST a social worker are you?” 

“Actually that is my primary job. It’s just a little different from the usual job description. You see my area of expertise is in extraterrestrial relations, and most of my clients are from outer space.”

“Two years ago I would have called you a lolo, now I’m not too sure about myself.”

“I know what you mean. My travels with The Doctor made me a valuable asset to the United States. When I turned 18 I joined the Army voluntarily, but I was quickly recruited by the CIA due to the sensitive knowledge in my head. And when the United Nations formed UNIT I was one of the people they tasked with handling human-alien relations.”

“Wait! We’re human! Why were you sent to us?”

“A few reasons reasons. I have friends in the normal social services bureau, and I got this note two days before I met you.” He pulled out a note that had both today’s and a date from a year ago on it. She looked at him askance. “Just look inside.” He didn’t tell her the other reason.... Not yet.

She pulled out a hand written note in a messy scrawl. ‘Watch Lilo!’ She looked at Mr. Bubbles. “That first one was the date we met Stitch, and the others. How? How did he know to send this to you?”

“He often does things out of order. He hasn’t sent the letter yet, but he has in the past. And since he sent the letter from the past, we know that they arrived safely.”

“Did he send you a letter about the mosquitoes?”

Cobra laughed. “No, he was actually there, but that’s a different story.”

“So did you tell him about the letter?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He has a ‘No Spoilers’ policy when it comes to things like that. Only he cheats sometimes.”

“Like this one?”

“I hope so.”

The TARDIS made its usual landing, and once Stitch picked Lilo up off the floor they both walked over to the door. The Doctor walked over to stand beside them. “I set the controls for three weeks before Stitch arrived. How will that do?”

Lilo looked at her feet. “That would have been when we were all visiting our parent’s graves down by the beach. It was the anniversary of the accident, and the whole family got together. Was stayed at my Uncle’s seaside house for a whole week. The weather was nice so everyone went surfing but me. I just couldn’t. I just didn’t feel right.” 

“Tummy felt off, and your eyes hurt?” When she nodded he knelt down beside her. “It could have been Temporal Occlusion. Happens when the same non-temporally-stabilized being coexists in the same time, but in different places. You felt yourself... That or you had a head cold and shouldn’t have gone swimming anyway.” 

He was about to open the door when she sighed. “I hope it was a head cold, because it wasn’t nearly as bad as the day my parents died in that storm.” The Doctor paused with the door half-opened to see the a different beach but he knew it was still the same island. The arc of lightning and peal of thunder lit up the interior of the TARDIS as he looked out at the wind swept vista of Kaua’i. “This doesn’t look right!” Lilo had poked her head out the door.

“No Lilo, it does not.” He could see a hotel through the rain and he wondered what fine mess the TARDIS had gotten them in to. He looked directly at Gantu and frowned furiously. “Leave your weapons here.”

“Do you expect trouble?”

“Yes. I always expect trouble.”

“Then why shouldn’t I go in armed.”

“Your weapons would make it worse.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Call it experience. Nearly every soldier and police officer I’ve ever known has fired first and asked questions later. Not only is that stupid, it is usually fatal. And more often than not, for the one that fires first.”

Gantu pulled out his blaster, and hold out blaster, and his stun baton, and his shock cuffs, and his netgun, and his sticky bombs, and his hunting knife, and his extending staff. 

“Where do you hide all of that?” Lilo looked at the pile of weapons on the floor and whistled.

“Skin folds. As handy as pockets are for humans.” The Doctor tossed Gantu back the extending Staff. “I thought you said no weapons?”

“Who said that was just a weapon?” The Doctor pulled out some raincoats from a closet that Gantu could have sworn wasn’t there before. “Folds in Space-Time, even handier than skin folds.”

“Indeed! So what are you taking?”

“Just my Sonic Screwdriver.”

“A screwdriver? Are you going to unscrew the badguys?” 

“Who said it just had just a screwdriver setting?”

Donny pulled his ukulele out of the trunk and looked at his wife’s skirt admiringly. She had really outdone herself again. He knew the hotel liked their act, and with all of the competition for work like this he was glad that his wife could make their costumes as well.

A smack to the back of his head brought him back to the moment. His wife Leia looked at his with one of the unladylike looks that belied her name. The name Leia may have meant “Lady” traditionally, but she shared more in common with a certain movie princess than any woman he had ever met. And that was what had made him fall madly in love with her. She was the wave to his surfboard, the sand to his.... “Yes dear?”

“You get rain on that, and you get to wash it. We need to get inside.”

“Don’t worry Maka Leia. The overhang will protect us... Oh, but not from those lolos running in the rain!” He closed the trunk to cover their gear from the obvious tourists that were running in from the beach.

The Doctor was the first to get in from the rain, and once again he wished he hadn’t given up carrying an umbrella. He was also the first to spot the two VERY familiar (In more ways than one!) people staring at them. His hand was over Lilo’s mouth before she could speak, and he was rewarded by a bite that was surprisingly strong. The bite faded when she spotted who he had stopped her from running into. That’s when the struggle really began. Luckily Stitch was lending a hand... well four... in holding her back. The Doctor touched her neck in a way that had been badly imitated on a certain TV series, and she slumped down into Stitch’s arms. “I’m sorry, I afraid our daughter seems to have come down with something. We’ll just be going.”

Leia looked at the two men and their strange midget friend. “Daughter? Those two guys? Did they seem odd to you?”

“Those two hoale must be from the mainland. Ohana’s come in many forms, who are we to judge?” He watched as the tall gentleman with the British accent left without looking back, and shrugged. Working at the hotels he had been exposed to people from all over the world, and he tried not to let provincial attitudes color his worldview. His own sister now lived with a nice lady that worked as a nurse on the big island. He had to admit that Nani was happy for the first time in her life, and that made him happy. (He got to name their first daughter, and Leia got to name Lilo.) He noticed how his wife was till looking at the couple. “What?”

“The kid looked so much like Lilo. Only twice her size. It was like looking in to the future.”

“Or the past... I remember taking all those pictures of you when you were her age. You two could have been twins. I could just retire my camera.” They had grown up together, and just about every picture they had came from one of his second-hand cameras.

That got him a punch in the arm. “Don’t you dare. Lilo loves taking pictures with you.”

“And I with her. Let’s get this show over. We need to get back before the storm get really bad.”

“We could stay here. Nani’s watching Lilo.”

“Are you lolo? They would charge us just to park in the lot. Maybe we could drive down to the beach and... OUCH!” He looked at his ribs. “That could leave a bruise.”

“Serves you right, sukebe.” He feigned innocence when she called him a pervert, but she was smiling. “Maybe.”

The Doctor pulled out his Psychic Paper, and his UNIT credit card. The card’s use would, no doubt, cause all sorts of people to scramble to find out what he was doing here; but by the time they got here, they should be gone. He walked up to the concierge desk and looked at the startled young man standing there with his mouth open. “Lovely weather you have here. It reminds me of home. I was wondering if you had our room ready. Here’s our reservation.” He flashed the Psychic paper in front of the poor man and watch as his mouth snapped shut.

He had said all the right phrases, and shown the Boss’ symbol. “Yes sirs. Our honeymoon suite is available for you at your earliest convenience. We actually were not expecting you for a few days. But the room is ready, and of course your privacy is guaranteed. Come with me Mr. And Mr. Smith.” The Doctor looked at the blank piece of paper and wished he could as a few more questions. He just wasn’t sure he wanted the answers.

“What about paying? I haven’t given you my card.”

This wasn’t part of the codes... “Sir... But you already paid for everything up front last year. You won’t catch me in one of your tricks like the last one.” He looked at The Doctor with a conspiratorial glance. “And I like the new look. Very modern.” The countersign was....

“Thank you, I’m still trying to get used to it.” The Doctor put his card and wallet away. Sometimes the answers just made for more questions. Who would he be talking about? He knew of a few entities that could change forms, and none of them were native to Earth. What was it about this little Island that brought so many extraterrestrials to it’s shores? He rolled his eyes as he realized that he had a rather fond affinity for another island that seemed to attract aliens, monsters, and evil-doers of unusual abilities. 

The small airport of Lihue that served the island of Kaua’i was not very big, and the private jet that landed on the runway was no different from any of the other private jets that mingled with the passenger jets that brought tourists to the sleepy little island. It came in between a Lamda Airlines 757 and an older Air Hawaii DC3 cargo plane. It taxied over to an open spot near the gates, and met a Limo with man and woman dressed in black. Two men exited the plane. The first looked like he might have been a wrestler at one point. His expensive suit seemed to strain to contain him as he moved down the steps. The second man wore a hat and glasses and looked like he might blow away in a stiff breeze. He walked down the stairs and over to the Limo. “Howzit boss?” The man called out as they drew close.

“Poho Andy, poho.” In fact, it had been worse than a waste of time. He had nearly been picked up by UNIT agents. Andy opened the door for him and he smiled. 

Andy took a step back involuntarily. “Woah boss, harsh times?” He bumped into the man behind him. “Tiny?”

The boss put his hand on Andy’s chest. Andy seized up as he was suddenly gripped by some incredibly strong force. “Andy, someone tipped them off. Someone that knew my schedule. Someone close to me.”

“They got to my sister. I had to or they were going.. AGGGHhhhh.....” The pain was more than he had ever imagined. He tried to pull back, but his body was still frozen in place.

“I know. But don’t worry. They can’t get to her now.”

“NOOoo....” He felt his life force ripped out of his body, and as he grew weaker he realized what all of Mr. Smith’s victims did. He had never had a chance. He watched as the now healthy-looking Mr. Smith drew back his hand.

“Go for a walk Andy.” Andy’s body was no longer under his control. He watched helplessly as he turned towards the water and started to slowly walk towards the sea.

“Darla, make sure he doesn’t get stopped. Then get back to the hotel.”

“That’s on the other side of the island.”

“Take his wallet. He won’t need the money where he’s going anyway.”

“Right boss.” She watched her former partner walk towards his doom and realized that her boss was the scariest person she had ever met.

“Tiny, you drive. After all of that I need to take my mind off of losing my former alias. I hear that they had a new dancer at the hotel. Maybe we could corrupt her.”

“It’s a husband and wife team. He plays the ukulele while she hula dances. And their files says they have kids.”

Mr. Smith collapsed into the luxurious seats. “Oh wonderful. I love the ukulele. Maybe we could corrupt both of them.”

“Two at once. Isn’t that risky?”

“They’re only human. What could possibly go wrong?” They both laughed at the cliched joke. They both knew the Great Demon Murphy all to well. Fifteen UNIT agents, twenty of Boston’s Finest, and thirty of his own people had died to protect his secret. “Oh speaking of which... Would you go grab my snack?” Tiny returned with a large bag which he tossed to the back. The unladylike language that came from inside let him know that Gloria was awake. “Hello Gloria.” The bag suddenly went silent. “Remember that I told you I had a gift for your silence?”

“Yes...” He felt her shudder as his hand roamed over her body. He could feel her trembling body suddenly stiffen as he put his hand over her heart. He moved it up to her head, and patted it. 

“I told you that you wouldn’t die far from home.” His hand touched her head.

“Yes...?”

“Welcome home.” She stiffened as he pulled every bit of energy she had left in her body. He could fell her life drain in to him and it felt so good. He had many humans, and their emotions were like candy to him. And Hope was the tastiest when it was allowed to burn. All too soon, she was a lifeless husk. He would have to toss her into the hotel’s incinerator like the others had been. And since he wasn’t sure that Darla hadn’t betrayed him as well, he would have to do the same for her when she returned. Anyone that got in his way had to be eliminated. It had been that way ever since he had crashed on this wretched planet all those centuries ago. He had heard rumors of aliens coming to this planet, but he never seemed to find one with a working ship. His own had sunk in to the sea long ago, and he was getting desperate to get off this water world. What he wouldn’t do to find that UNIT legend, The Dentist or something, and steal his Tartan Ship. He was still trying to get his mind around a tartan-colored space ship as they left the airport. Maybe it was TARTAN, and that stood for something.... Ten Armed Recon Tactical Attack Node... Node? Why would it be called a node? Maybe it wasn’t in English. He sat back in his seat and enjoyed the view.

 

“Now don’t get comfy, we seem to have a problem.” The Doctor turned around to see Gantu, Lilo, and Stitch, all lying on the heart-shaped bed. Gantu’s finger was centimeters away from the “Magic Fingers” button, and all of them had a guilty look on their faces.

“Yes, you didn’t let me stop my parents from dying yet!” Lilo jumped up from the bed in a way that The Doctor was sure violated some rule of physics.

The Doctor may have caught her effortlessly, but his reply wasn’t so easy on either of them. “Do you love Stitch?”

“Yes, more than anything.”

“Would you have gone to the pound if your parents had still been alive?”

“Of course I would have I...”

“No, no Lilo wouldn’t.” In the few seconds that The Doctor had first mentioned it, Stitch had run over a thousand permutations of the possible outcomes of his landing on Kaua’i. Ever since it had been at the back of his mind, and none of them ever worked out with out some sort of pain. Those that were without Lilo’s intervention tended to go badly. If Gantu or Jumba did stop him before he managed to leave the island he would have still caused massive chaos, just as he had been designed to do. If no one had been able to stop him, he would have gone on spreading death and destruction across the whole planet. Human weapons were just too weak to do him harm. Of the ones where he was stopped, it still didn’t go so well. Half wound up with him on an empty planet, or worse. The others required the Federation to gas the planet and kill all life on Earth. “Do we have to let them die?”

“If they don’t die, and in an automobile accident, then we have changed the past. And that will cause ripples into the future.”

“Wait, you go around in a time machine. Don’t you, by your very nature, cause those ripples?” Gantu may not have Stitch’s super-computer brain, but he was no slouch. The Doctor had heard this question many times before though.

“I go where the TARDIS takes me for the most part. We go where trouble is, and try to fix it. We are the other rock that drops into the pool. We work to cancel out evil and strife. I’m sure that there is a book somewhere with all of my adventures sitting in some library in the future. It sits on a shelf collecting dust because as long as I don’t read it, I can’t cheat or skip ahead. You see even my travels are someone else’s history lesson. I can’t even change my own destiny by going back in time to undo my mistakes. The TARDIS has a lockout. It won’t let me be in close proximity to myself if it can help it.” He didn’t mention all the times that lock out had failed and the number of Pair-of-Docs that had caused. The Time Lords had even turned off the lockouts during the Time War, and nearly fractured time itself in the process. He had already seen the changes. They had been little things so far. The UNIT officer’s uniforms no longer looked the same, or had ever looked the same, as the one’s he remembered from years ago. Some things may have change a little, some not at all, but he was willing to bet that somethings were not only not the way he remembered, but were completely different. And sadly some beings and places were probably either lost to time, or had never existed in the first place. “I may be a time traveler, but my knowledge may no longer be accurate. I have a feeling that I will wind up with far more surprises in my future than I had in my past.” A knock on the door made him look worriedly at it. “Guy’s, we may be about to have guests.”

“Room service! I’m here to turn down the beds.” The woman’s voice was the ususal bored voice of a tired maid, and when The Doctor looked through the peephole he could see her standing there with her cart.

The Doctor opened the door and was moving back when the woman was suddenly flying into the room. She collided with The Doctor and they both landed on the floor. The man that tossed her into the room stood in the doorway. He was easily larger than Mr. Bubbles, and nearly as large as Gantu’s human disguise. “Hey LOLO! That hurt, you said you wanted to surprise him! Not toss me like a roller. I’m so sorry sir. They said they knew you and... ouch!” She screamed as the large man picked her and The Doctor up effortlessly.

The pain in The Doctor’s arm wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a scrum. But a quick twist, and he was free anyway. “Who are you?”

Another man entered the room and the hairs on the back of The Doctor’s neck stood on end. The large man was obviously dangerous, but the skinny man that followed him made the Time Lord’s danger sense go off the chart. “I thought you would know that already. “I’m Mr. Smith, and this is my good friend Mr. Smith. And you seem to be in my room.”

The maid fell to her knees. “No... I didn’t know. I’m sorry Mr. Smith, if I had known who you were...” She seemed to lose the power of speech as he drew nearer to her.

“If you knew, then you would have been far too nervous to be of any help. And now that your help is no longer required...”

“Don’t hurt her!” The Doctor’s voice hadn’t changed, but Mr. Smith recognized the power in it.

“Oh? And who are you to be making demands?”

“I must say... ‘Who’ is a good question. But I go by The Doctor.”

“So UNIT has found my hideout. That’s too bad.” He looked down at the maid that was still cowering on the floor. “Miss?”

“Kamano... Anna Kamano, sir.” She looked at his outstretched hand. 

“Don’t.” She looked at the strange man that she had collided with. His eyes were pleading with her.

“Oh come now Doctor whatever-your-name-is, I own these people. They are my servants, and I must take care of them.” He smiled once more, and held out his hand. The Doctor was about to move when the larger man pulled a very large hand gun out of his vest.

Anna looked between the men, and knew she really didn’t have a choice. Her hand went out and Mr. Smith gently helped her up. He looked at her with those strange eyes of his and she felt her fear disappear. “Sir? Do you want me to call security?” 

“No Ms. Kamano, that won’t be necessary. Oh look, you’re trembling.” He hugged the terrified woman. She tensed up in his embrace. “Is something wrong?”

“What.... What’s happening.....” She felt as if all the energy in her body was being drained. “So tired...” She looked up to see the cold look in Mr. Smith’s eyes. “Why?”

“Because you would have talked, and we can’t have that.”

Stitch was moving before anyone could react. Almost anyone. Tiny managed to shoot him three times before he knocked the maid out of Mr. Smith’s arms. Stitch rolled over and stood up; all four of his arms were out, and he was mad. Tiny almost got another shot off, but an uppercut from Gantu sent him flying back out into the hall. He had missed the door, but he had managed to make a new one in his flight through the wall.

The boss noticed that the tiny alien had shaken off the bullets with little apparent damage. In fact, he had intentionally taken the last shot so that the body he had grabbed wouldn’t be harmed. “Too little too late, just like you.” He watched as Tiny climbed back through the hole in the wall. “Well I see they decided to send the best this time.”

“This time?”

“Yes, didn’t they tell you about Boston?”

“I don’t get all the memos.” The Doctor waved his Sonic Screwdriver over the body of the maid. Her desiccated corpse looked like it had been dead for years, not seconds. “So you’re a Cadaverian. And judging from your body, I would say you were about to jump ship.”

“Oh you are good. Now I see why they call you the Doctor.”

“Oh it’s more than just that. I make house calls.” He looked at the other dead body in front of him. The person that had been Mr. Smith had been dead for years. What was keeping the body moving was a possessing entity that could absorb energy from the living. And while it could reanimate a body, the longer it was in a body, the more energy it took to keep it from rotting away. “And I’m also good at mixing drinks.” He moved closer to the bed where Lilo was still cowering.

“What? Are you trying to annoy me, or amuse me? You are managing to do neither.” He walked closer to the Doctor while keeping an eye on the other two. Tiny rushed the large man that was with the spy and they were soon trading blows, while the alien rushed him. He reached out for the diminutive creature only to find the creature grabbing him and tossing him out the window. Glass exploding all around him, he grabbed the drapes and held on. Landing on the patio outside he slid on the wet stones. He ran back inside to be hit in the face with something very cold, and very wet. “If that was an attempt at holy water, you failed. And I’m not a vampire... I’m a...”

“Tiki torch!” The tiny one’s voice was odd, but he understood all too well what was about to happen when he felt the heat surround him. His body was on fire, and while he couldn’t feel the pain, he knew that he had to put it out before his body ceased to function. He ran right back out the broken window, and out into the pouring rain.

“Stupid human. You are picking a fight with the wrong sentients” Gantu watched as the man he had tossed through the wall came back for more. Both of them could tell that the skinny man was not human, just by his smell. And after seeing what he could do, Gantu knew that Stitch was the best one to attack the monster. But this one was apparently human. At least he smelled like one.

The Doctor opened the door leading to the adjoining room and shoved Lilo through. “Run for the TARDIS, you’ll be safe there. She heard noise from the hall way and looked towards the far wall and the patio on the other side of the room. Lilo looked out at the rain and down over the edge. They were on a cliff, but the room next door shared the patio, so she tried opening that door. It was locked, but the chair looked sturdy enough.

Tiny had finally found a worthy foe, and he was enjoying the fight immensely. Whoever, or whatever, he was fighting was a pro. And they were equally matched in skill. It was too bad that the fool didn’t know what he had gotten himself into. He was surprised when the doctor had tossed the alcohol on his boss, and the little one set him on fire; but he knew the boss would shrug that kind of thing off. All he had to do was take out these three. The Doctor pointed the little wand thing he had at the door, and had let the girl escape, but the fool had returned to help the fool in front of him. The tiny one had followed his boss out to continue their fight now doubt. “You’re good.”

“Then why are you smiling?”

“I’m better.” Tiny activated the hidden systems his boss had installed in his body. Cybernetics that were far in advance of anything humans could produce had turned him into a walking tank, and now it was time to unlimber the big guns. His hands started to glow with energy right before he unleashed the blasts into the two people standing in front of him.

“Oh shi...Ahhhh!!!!” The Doctor and Gantu were stunned when a massive electrical shockwave hit them and everything else in the room. The TV, and lights exploded, and the clock melted. The two foes fell to the ground. The Doctor was unconscious, but the other.... thing... was twitching in pleasure? He quickly pulled out some cuffs, but he knew that no cuffs would work on the other alien. He pulled out some of the cargo tie downs that he had stuffed in the maid’s cart. The straps were nylon and super strong, but he hoped he would have time to get the beast down to the lab before he came to.

Stitch slid on the stones as he followed the burning man down to the beach. He waited on the shore to see if he would come back out of the water. 

The boss sat on the bottom and let his body heal. Not needing to breathe for anything other than speech meant that he could stay down here for quite a while. He had actually spent nearly a year under the Atlantic when the ship he had been on was sunk by a German sub during the second world war. He had walked back to Ireland and found a fisherman who’s body was in far better shape than his former one. He missed the red hair that body had, but he didn’t miss the pug ugly face it had.

Stitch was wondering if the man had drowned, but he needed to find out one way or the other. He was about to get Gantu when an electrical explosion seemed to happen in the room they had been hiding in. He climbed up to the window and looked in to see both The Doctor, and Gantu tied up on the floor. The large man had been joined by several others who were looking around the room. He was about to go find Lilo when he felt a hand grab him by the ear. He tried to free himself, but he found his body getting sluggish.

“Oh my look at what I caught. Not so funny now, are you?”

All Stitch managed to get out before darkness claimed him was a simple: “Still cute and fluffy.” Mr. Smith held onto Stitch for quite a while, all the time drawing in more and more life energy and repairing the damage he had sustained. 

“You are amazing little one. What are your secrets?” He carried the limp form of Stitch in with him as he looked at the devastation they had wrought. “And what a repair bill. It’s a good thing we will be leaving before I have to do them.”

 

Lilo found herself in a rather familiar situation. She was running for her life. The hotel had many places for a child her size to hide from grown-ups, but the people she was being chased by were very good at searching. She had managed to evade them so far, but she could hear them getting closer. She ran down the hall and out into the night. The rain was coming down in torrents, and she knew that she needed a place to hide. She rounded the corner to see her dad’s car just like she remembered it. It was parked under an overhang and she could see inside in ways that she had been too small to do so the last time she had been next to it. She jumped in and climbed into the back after locking the door behind her. She knew the passenger-side door was unlocked because you could only lock it from the inside, and her father never fixed it because he said that he never had anything worth stealing in it. The blanket she had wrapped herself up in so many times before came in handy as she covered herself in it.

And it was none too soon. Only a few seconds after she settled in the doors were rattled by the people looking for her. She heard her mother’s voice, and the men said something about looking for a burglar and left. She could hear her mother call out to her father, and her heart nearly leapt out of her chest when the door was unlocked. “What lolo would try and steal anything from our car. We don’t have anything worth... Lilo?” The blanket was pulled back and Lilo looked up at her parents and was torn. She couldn’t tell them the truth, but she couldn’t lie to them, but Stitch, The Doctor and Gantu were in trouble and needed her help, but if she.... She lept into her mother’s arms and cried.

The doubt in her mother’s eyes hurt in ways she couldn’t explain. “Are you my Lilo? You look too old. Who are you?”

The truth burst out of her like the storm outside. “I am from a few years in the future, I came back in time to get a copy of my picture that got burned up when our house exploded when my... dog who’s an alien fought other aliens in the kitchen and the bad guy who isn’t bad anymore blew it up.” She inhaled but continued before they could say anything. “Then we all lived together, except for Gantu who is still stupid, but not bad. Anyway we were visited by a time-traveling doctor in a big blue Police phone booth that’s much bigger on the inside and we all fit inside, even Gantu who was given a necklace that made him smaller, but when we got here it was the wrong date, this is the day you two are supposed to die and I wanted to stop that, but they said I couldn’t or there would be a doctor convention or something, but we got caught hiding in someone’s room and they chaseded us when caught us right after one of them turned a woman into a mummy. Then they told me to run, but they must’a got caught, and that I was to go find mister Cobra Bubbles and tell him everything.”

The tears in Leia’s eyes were a contradiction to the smile on her face. Donny put a hand on each of their shoulders. “Yup, that’s our Lilo. What do we do now?”

“We have to help them or you will die because I can’t feed the fish today.”

Skipping the part about the fish, Leia picked up Lilo and looked at her. “Dear, she said Cobra Bubbles.”

“If that hairy popolo is involved then I don’t want anything to do with it.”

Lilo dried her tears. “They are our ohana too, even if you haven’t met them yet.”

Donny looked out at the hotel and sighed. “I hate it when you pull ohana on me. And Mr. Bubbles and I go way back.”

“THAT’S what Nani says ALL the time! Wait... what?”

The room was soundproof, and could only be opened from the outside. The guard watching the two people inside would have no qualms about shooting either one of them, even if one of them was his boss’ bodyguard. The bodyguard made everyone in the facility nervous, and having to watch him work was bad enough, having to watch him work on that monster was even worse. The thing looked like a shark and an elephant had mated, and it was not the nice kind of relationship. It had taken over fifteen men to get that thing down here, and another twenty for it’s friends. The guard looked at the locked metal rooms that Mr. Smith liked to keep his ‘Guests’ in. Every guard here had been given the task of trying to escape from one when they joined. The prize of a million dollars had yet to be claimed by anyone.

Tiny stood over Gantu and shouted at his captive. “IF YOU DO NOT TALK RIGHT NOW MONSTER , I WILL DO UNSPEAKABLE THINGS TO YOU!”

“Like what?”

“I WILL... Wait...what?”

“What unspeakable things will you do to me? Or don’t you want to say, because then you will have spoken about them, and they will no longer be ‘unspeakable’?”

Tiny looked at the strange creature strapped to his table and pondered the monster’s comment. “I will cut you open and layout your innards for the birds to eat.”

Gantu laughed. “It will be very hard for me to talk then.”

Tiny was not used to his victims not being terrified of him. This put him off his script and he had to improvise. Tiny hated to improvise. He simply wasn’t very good at it. “I will pull your teeth out one by one until you sing like a canary.”

Gantu actually laughed so hard the table shook. “I think I will have a hard time singing either way, but feel free to have a go at my teeth.” He opened his mouth far wider than Tiny had ever seen a human manage. Inside he saw row upon row of sharp looking teeth. Tiny felt rather ill at the thought of sticking his hand into that maw.

“I’ll save that for later. I will pull out your finger... nails?” He watched as Gantu wiggled his fingers and then he took a look at the elephant like feet and sighed.

Two hours later, Tiny walked into Mr. Smith’s office, poured himself a stiff drink, and sat down on the couch. He drank the entire drink in one go and softly began weeping.

“Um Tiny? Did you get anything out of him?”

“Plenty... He is a retied officer in the United Galactic Federation Space Patrol who has been exiled here due to his inability to catch the small furry one. We spoke for over an hour.”

“Then why...” Mr. Smith waved his hand at the drink, and Tiny’s tears.

“Because I didn’t break him, he broke me, and he felt sorry for me.” He looked at the glass and sighed before getting up to refill it. “You know the electrical shocks were the only thing to actually to work on him, but he likes them?” He slumped in the chair and looked at the ceiling fan as if it would sooth his mind before he continued. “That was about the only thing that worked on him at all. He even gave me some pointers on how to use a whip more effectively.”

“What about using the others against him? Torture them in front of him?” 

At first Mr. Smith thought that Tiny was laughing, but then he heard the swift inhale at the end. “That freak... He’s colder than I am. He told me that his only mission was to make sure that they didn’t leave the planet. He even offered to help me with the fuzzy one, showed me his weakness. The little bugger can’t swim. The only one I think we could use against him is the girl, and we still haven’t found her yet.

Lilo’s parents knew that if they didn’t do their act, then the hotel people would be suspicious, but they couldn’t leave Lilo in the car. “I could join you on the stage.” She climbed out of the car and pulled out her bag. She had just come from Hula class when they ran in to The Doctor, and she quickly put on her skirt. 

Leia snickered. “Lilo, you have two left feet. I had trouble getting you to...” Lilo started to dance, and Leia punched her laughing husband in the arm again. “You got better. I missed so much. Nani must have gone pro by now.” Nani had been a prize winning surfer ever since she was ten, by the time Lilo was from... She saw the look on Lilo’s face. “What is it?”

Lilo’s crestfallen look of guilt was a sorry sight to see. “She gave up surfing to raise me. And I was not a very good sister.”

“Oh Lilo...” She hugged her daughter. She had never realized how much their death would have impacted their children.

Donny shook his head once again. “I’m still trying to get my head around Bubbles taking care of our family. And no hair?”

“Yes he is a social worker, and he says he works for UNIT like The Doctor.”

“What unit?”

“NO, UNIT! Can’t you hear the capitalization?”

“After my time then.”

“Your time?”

“He used to be my boss in the CIA.” 

Lilo was stunned. Her dad was a spy! “When was this?”

“Years before you two were born.” Mr Bubbles looked at Nani’s stunned face. She had asked how long he had been watching Lilo, and he told her that he had already been keeping an eye on the two of them. When he told her that her parents had worked for him and that he had made it his job to keep an eye on them after her parents died so suddenly. To say the least, she was rethinking everything she had ever thought about her parents.

Lilo looked at her dad like he had become superhero. “So why did you get canned?”

“I saved my partner’s life instead of catching the person we were after.”

“Why?”

“Because I was in love with her.”

“Um... did mom know?”

“You could say that...ouch!” He rubbed his arm. That one was going to leave a bruise.

“I was his partner, dear.”

Lilo did a fair imitation of a gold fish as her mouth was trying to make sounds, but nothing came out. Her mom was a spy too! Donny laughed. “I think you broke her brain. I’m going to call Mr. Bubbles. He pulled out his phone and dialed a number he had sworn to never dial again. He heard two rings before the line dropped. He looked at the phone. “It’s being jammed.”

Cobra Bubbles sighed. “They called me that night, but the call dropped before I could answer it. The next morning I got the news about their accident. I came over to be a part of the investigation. But since that hotel thing happened the same night...”

“What hotel thing?”

“Well let me tell you what we found...”

The stage was setup for the night’s entertainment, and Donny, Leia, and a quickly scrubbed and dressed, Lilo were ready to go on when one of the men that had been chasing Lilo earlier caught sight of them. “Hey! Who’dat?”

“That’s my daughter. She’s joining my wife on stage for the last dance. What of it?”

“She looks just like a girl that ran from a room with two grifters that tried to bum a room.”

Donny flipped out his wallet, and pulled out a picture. “Check it brah.”

The man looked at the tiny child and the teenage girl next to her sitting side by side on a surfboard. “She grew up a bit.”

“Yeah, need to take more pictures, but this is mah fave.”

The kid was obviously not the one he was looking for. “Cute kids, k’den.” He left looking perplexed.

“That was close.” Leia watched as the man left. “You think we’ll be scrapping soon.”

“Let’s hope not, but our luck today can only go up if we were supposed to die tonight.” Donny had been in far too many close calls to not hold The Great Demon Murphy in high regard.

The Doctor had felt worse, but at this moment he couldn’t remember when. He opened his eyes to see Mr. Smith standing in front of him. “I just drew off enough energy from the two of you to kill anyone else. Heck, ten somebodies. You three are a mystery. I drained your friend to the extent that I could, but he is still holding on. My most able torturer is a wreck after your other friend resisted everything he could come up with. So I have to ask: where is your Tartan ship?”

The Doctor opened one eye and tried to lift his head. He was rewarded with a dizzy spell that nearly made him black out. Stitch was chained up with heavy chains attached to the walls, and held upside down in the air. “It’s on the beach.” 

“Do you take me for an idiot?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Funny, and I guess I deserved that for delivering such a cliche line.” He pulled out a book from his coat. The plain grey book was nothing more than a notebook with a pen attached. “The Evil Overlord’s playbook. I have been trying to make as few of the mistakes that so many villains in the past have made as I can. I was planning on writing a book and then some fool went and made a website and ruined my idea. Anyway, I do need to put that in the book.”

“Oh great, and you’re a comedian too?”

“Not really, I just try to not make the same mistake twice. So tell me Doctor, how did UNIT find my little lair here. I didn’t use any money from my last identity to fund this place, and I only came here on private flights that I paid good money to evade scrutiny.”

“Would you believe we are here for our vacation?”

“No.”

“Pity, when it’s not raining I love this planet.”

“That makes one of us. I want off of this pathetically primitive planet and away from it’s frail little apes.”

“So why haven’t you? Stranded, or exiled?”

“The former I’m afraid. My ship crashed on this backwater planet centuries ago, and I have been on the run for most of them. My people would have drained this planet in days, but I have only been able to stay alive by moving from host to host, and they always wear out within a few years.”

The Doctor had recovered enough to lift his head up to look at the thing pretending to be a human. “So you never heard.”

“Heard what?”

“You might be the last Cadaverian. It’s rather sad actually. They managed to be the one thing that could unite warring civilizations.”

“You lie, we can’t die. We are beings of pure energy. If one body dies we can always take over the next body. I have even taken over the bodies of the very people that hunted me.”

“First: Why would I lie? Second: what happens if there are no bodies within reach? Say in deep space.”

Mr. Smith looked at his prisoner, and had the funny feeling that the power had shifted somehow. “If I am the last, and I don’t believe you, then why tell me?”

“To give you a chance to give up, and let UNIT take you into custody.”

“Ha Ha HA HA HA!!! Oh that’s even more cliched then mine. Really Doctor, why would I do something that stupid.”

“So that you won’t die so far from home. I could take you back to Parthon, back to your home world. The radiation is high enough to live on in your energy state. You wouldn’t have to hunt, or run any more.”

The idea of feeling the energy waves of home once again did have a certain appeal, but he knew the other side of that coin. “In an energy state, I wouldn’t be able to leave. I would be trading one prison for another. No, I have a better idea. I take your body, and your ship. Then all my dreams will come true.”

Lilo wanted to pinch herself. This felt like a dream. She was on the same stage as her mother, and they were both dancing for a crowd of tourists. She watched as the mainlanders were spellbound by the music and the dancing. She snuck a glance at her mother when they turned around. Her mother danced like a pro, and Lilo did her best to do as well. She nearly froze when the large man that had barged into the room entered the dining hall with The Doctor standing next to him. He looked right past her like he didn’t even recognize her. She stopped dancing when the music stopped. She walked off the stage with her parents to the crowd’s applause. She smiled and waved to everyone and tried to not look at The Doctor. Where was Stitch?

Stitch opened his eyes and looked around. He had been chained up for a while, but now that the evil man was gone... No, he wasn’t. He could smell the same scent as before, but he couldn’t.... There was a pile of clothes in the middle of the room. They had been the clothes the man had been wearing, but where was the man. They were covered in dust and something... Hair? The same kind of hair that the man that attacked him had. 

The room held more questions than answers. If The Doctor had defeated him, why had he left without Stitch? Why hadn’t Gantu stopped to gloat at Stitch’s predicament. Where was Lilo? Why was he upside down? Why did his nose always itch when he couldn’t scratch it? Why did hot dogs come in packs of ten when the bun came in packs of eight?

The last two he might not of had an answer for, but he did have a solution to one of the others. He pulled on the chains and while found them to be rather strong, the wall they were attached to was not as well made. So he pulled the chains out of the wall. Landing in a heap on the floor with the chains still attached to his limbs he set to work prying them off one by one.

The guard watching the lab had just made his sweep when he heard a strange voice from behind him. “Excuse me.” He spun around only to find a blue koala with four arms looking up at him with two of the saddest eyes he had ever seen. He fired his full clip into the creature and reached for his radio. Only his hand never made it. “That tickled. My turn.”

Gantu was still unconscious in the soundproof lab when the full length window was smashed by the guard’s now unconscious body flying first through it then across the lab. “Stupid human, guns may hurt someone but not Stitch. Gantu, howzit going?” Stitch jumped on the former captain’s body and he noticed the drooping eyes, and the unhealthy blue pallor of his skin. “Oh, looks like someone ran you over with a truck. That doesn’t feel good, I know.” He looked around the room and noticed a clipboard, some sharp tools, and electrical pads. He knew the knives wouldn’t be helpful, but the clipboard.... He smacked Gantu in the face, but he still didn’t respond. Stitch was about to hit him again when he noticed what was written on it. Laughing as he worked, he quickly grabbed the shock paddles. “Clear!”

The voltage wasn’t set high enough to kill, but Tiny had so many other ways to kill people, or torture them that he hadn’t really tried turning it all the way up before he had given up. It looked like Mr. Smith had simply come down and drained Gantu of as much energy as he could take. If Stitch read the notes right, then he might be able to put some back in him. Gantu’s body arched up and he strained against the bonds as the electricity coursed through his body. The howl he let out could have broken the glass if Stitch hadn’t done so already. The smoke coming off of his singed outfit, and the half melted paddles made Stitch sneeze. “Thanks, I needed that.” Gantu still looked very pale, but he sat up and contemptuously snapped the chains that had been used to hold him. “I shouldn’t have let them do that.”

“Vampire guy?”

Gantu had seen many of the human movies, and the monster movie marathon that came on one of the cable channels was one of his favorites. “No, The Doctor. Only he smells like the Vampire guy now.” 

“Lilo, must find.”

“I will be along in a minute. I’m still a little light-headed.” He grabbed the pile of his possessions from the table next to where he was lying down. The necklace seemed to be okay. “Wait!” Stitch stop right before he left the room. Gantu tossed him the collapsible staff. “The humans have a saying. I wouldn’t touch it with ten foot pole. Well here’s one that a bit longer.”

Stitch looked at the tiny device in his hand. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it. Really, don’t. Now get going. Your pet needs you.”

“Stupidhead.”

“Don’t I know it.” Gantu actually smiled at Stitch. Stitch wasn’t sure if he liked the smile, but he returned it anyway.

The Doctor was trapped in his own body. He could see, hear, and feel everything, but he was unable to do anything but watch as Mr. Smith used him as a puppet. After the transfer Mr. Smith had told him that he would be hungry. So after he finished, they had drained as much energy as they could from Gantu and left him there to die. Mr. Smith kept telling him what he was about to do, and the internal monologing was starting to get on his nerves.

‘Now let’s go see what we can do with your body. The idea of waltzing into UNIT headquarters and draining everyone there has such a appeal, but I not stupid enough to do that just yet. No, we need to find your ship, and go back in time to rescue more of my kind. Then, and only then will I be able to have my revenge on this backside of nowhere little mudball.’

The Doctor’s hearts nearly skipped a beat when he spotted Lilo with her parents. That kind of meddling should only be done by a trained... Oh wait, he did that all the time. Unfortunately the sudden racing of his hearts had been noticed by Mr. Smith.

‘Well what do we have here. Is that the girl that you had with you? Do you know the Pelekai’s? Are they friend of yours? Oh that is delicious. I was planning on taking one of them, and I hadn’t decided on which one when you came along. Now I can kill them while you watch.’ 

Lilo watched as The Doctor looked her way and waved. She waved back, but something felt wrong. He wasn’t walking the same way he was before. His smile seemed forced, and... That when Stitch hit him from behind with the ice sculpture. “Stitch, no!”

Donny had figured that the man that just waved to Lilo must have been the Doctor she was talking about, and his friend. Then a blue... thing... attacked him from behind. One of the men near him pulled out a gun and pointed it at the... Koala? Lilo jumped on the man’s arm and the gun fired into the floor. He was about to shove Lilo back and point the gun in her direction when Leia grabbed his arm and tossed him, minus his pistol, into the crowd. By now the dinner guest were running for the door, and Lilo found herself picked up by her father and set on the stage out of harms way. “Lilo, stay here!”

“Look out dad!” She pointed behind him where another man had pulled out a weapon as well. His aim was thrown off by the ukulele knocking him unconscious.

Donny looked at the broken neck of his favorite instrument for a second before he picked up the unconscious man’s weapon. “Forget what I said, stay close to us.”

“Roger dat!” She jumped down, and tried to watch what Stitch was doing while not getting in the way.

Gantu had managed to put the necklace back on, and activate it, but he was still too weak to do much more than stumble down the hall. He heard the sound of gunfire and figured that that was where Lilo and Stitch must have found the thing that took over The Doctor. He stumbled out of the elevator and rolled over a couple of people that had been standing in front of it. He would have taken their weapons if he hadn’t bent the receivers and barrels in rolling over them. Human weapons were so fragile. Two others had charged him with their guns blazing only to find him simply annoyed by their attempts at an assault upon him. One was slammed into the wall while the other wound up the victim of his compatriot’s untimely outburst of gunfire. He looked at the two bodies and grumbled. The Doctor would not be pleased.

He finally reached the room where the gunfire was coming from and nearly was overcome by laughter when a tiny human female took a swing at him with a tiki torch. He simply looked at her and noticed the resemblance to Nani Pelekai and sighed. “You too? Is there anyone in your family that won’t attack me on sight or give me the stink eye?” 

“Mom, that’s Gantu... He’s on our side, sort of...”

“He’s the moke you were talking about?”

A bullet bounced off of Gantu’s side, and he looked over at the man that had just opened fire on them with a machinegun. He jumped in front of the Pelekai family before they could be hit. “You human’s never cease to amaze me at how often you will keep trying things that just don’t work.”

Stitch felt dizzy. The attack had knocked down the thing in The Doctor, but just getting close to him had made him feel weak. Then Tiny’s punch sent him flying through the plate glass window and out into the night. Tiny followed him out into the storm. A hail of gunfire kept him moving. Not because the bullets would hurt him, but because he wanted to draw him away from the hotel. He also didn’t want to get hit by that electrical attack that had taken down the others. The raging storm was not helping any. The lightning flashes lit the hotel’s parking lot, and the thunder drowned out the sound of gun fire all too well. Stitch dodged a spray of fire that hit an open sided tour bus behind him. He grabbed the bus and hit Tiny with it. He had expected to squash the human, but he was surprised when Tiny caught the bus in both hand and tried to wrench it out of Stitch’s grasp. He actually picked Stitch up and shook the bus to try and shake him off. Stitch climbed over the bus and down Tiny’s back. Tiny tossed the bus aside and spun around.

“Kamehameha!”

“You are not...” Who Tiny thought Stitch was would never be known; as Stitch set the end of expanding pole on the ground and hit the activator button to full. The end hit Tiny in the gut and sent him twenty feet into the air. “Why you I’m going to...ARGHHHH!!!” What he was going to do was snuffed out, along with him when the combination of a grounded memory metal pole and all of the metal in his cybernetically enhanced body turned him into a lighting rod with all too predictable results. Stitch held on through the pain, and when the smoke cleared all that was left of Tiny was a burnt corpse.

“I am sorry.”

“I’m not.” Stitch turned around to see The Doctor swing his Sonic Screwdriver in his direction. The sonic weapon fired and Stitch felt his insides start to hurt like nothing he had ever experienced before. It was like being on fire and inside a paint shaker all at once. And he liked being inside paint shakers. 

Gantu staggered out into the rain, and was starting to get annoyed at the constant pinpricks of the goons Mr. Smith had hired to protect him. He reached into a skinfold he hadn’t planed on revealing if he could help it, and pulled out a tiny device. The chemical bomb was unaffected by the electrical attacks, and energy drains, so he figured it would still work.

Donny saw what the big moke had in his hand and he pulled his wife and Lilo as far away from him as they could. When Gantu tossed the pineapple-shaped thing towards the goons they all dove for cover. Which was actually the worse thing they could have done. When it hit the ground it exploded into a quickly expanding sea of foam. Ten seconds later they were all encased in capture foam. Some might die if they hyperventilated, but most of them should live. “Now where did Stitch and that trog in The Doctor’s skin get off to?”

They spotted both of them in the parking lot. They were both lit by the bonfires caused by burning cars and obscured by the smoke from smoldering trees. “Oh my, that one was our car!” Donny watched his father’s 56 wagon being quickly reduced to wreckage.

Lilo stared at the wreck. If the car was wrecked, but they were alive, what would happen to the time thingy. She didn’t understand it all, but she knew that something big had just happened.

The Doctor saw the cars and Lilo’s parents and realized far better than she what had just happened. They only had moments before the timeline collapsed unless...

“I see we have some guests alien. It seems that this weapon won’t kill you, but I bet the humans over there won’t be so lucky.”

“Wait! Leave them alone.” Lilo and the others meant the wold to Stitch, and he would gladly give his own life for them. He suddenly got an image of the TARDIS with it’s door open. “Trade. You get ship, we say here.”

The fool. That was a time ship. All he had to do was go back in time and.... No, the little one was not a fool. None of them were. In fact he was willing to bet that the Pelekai’s were a part of UNIT too. It all fit together all to well. “What do you propose?”

“I show you ship, we stay.”

“No, you will come along.” He stopped Stitch’s protest with his hand. “Be honest, you are the only choice. Even you are no match for me since you want this body back. None of the others are worth enough, and even if I asked for the child as a hostage then one of you would try to stop me. And since you know that would lead to her death anyway, you would all try it.”

“You win, I go.” Stitch had figured that out already. The thing controlling The Doctor’s body already had the best hostage, even if he didn’t know it. The Doctor would be the only one here that could untangle the upcoming paradox.

The rain hadn’t let up; if anything it seemed to have gotten worse. Stitch’s senses noted something else. He didn’t know if it had anything to do with being this close to the TARDIS, but his hair was standing on end, his vison seemed off, and his stomach ached like nothing he had... Oh! The TARDIS had moved much closer to the hotel. He opened the door and looked at The Doctor. A sudden feeling of weakness overcame him as the creature used their combined abilities to sap Stitch’s strength.

Mr. Smith picked him up and held him at arms length. “You’ll understand if I don’t trust you, but that is a small ship, and there could be any number of traps inside. Anything that happens to me will happen to you first.” 

Stitch felt himself getting weaker by the second as they entered the ship. He spotted something that was a familiar shade of blue right before everything went black.

Mr. Smith marveled at how much larger the inside was from the outside. He was still looking at the strange language that seemed to be scribbled over every surface when a blur caught his attention. He managed to yell out: “There are two of you?”, right before Stitch2 hit him with a paddle. The padded paddle managed to knock both Mr. Smith/Doctor and Stitch1 against the far wall. Mr. Smith stood up and looked at the unconscious Time Lord lying in a heap next to him, and back to the two blue creatures. “No not two. The same one form different spots in the time line. Step back little one. I kill the first you and you will cease to be.”

“It’s okay. Lilo lives and if I die then so will you.”

Mr. Smith reached for the Sonic Screwdriver only to find Stitch2 holding it. He dropped it over the grating, and they could hear it bounce off something far below. “Oppsie, sorry!”

“You will be. I will drain...”

“Um, no you won’t.” Mr. Smith looked next to him to see The Doctor brushing off his pants. “By the way Stitch, one of you gets to go find that later.”

Mr. Smith stood up and tried to attack The Doctor only to find himself behind some kind of force field. “You can’t hold me, force fields are useless. I’m pure energy. He released himself from the confines of The Doctor’s body and dove into the field only to bounce off. “What?”

“Did you think that you were the first body-jumping, life force vampire, energy being to ever try to take over a Time Lord?”

“Um... Yes?”

The Doctor held up the notebook that Mr. Smith had kept all his rules in. “You should have watched more movies. ‘Never mess in the affairs of Immortals. Lest you forget that they have actually seen it all.’”

Mr. Smith looked at him with a pained expression on his face. “What movie was that?”

“War of Time. One of my fav.... Oh that’s right, it won’t be made for another three hundred years. Never mind.” And he tossed the book down on the controls.

“I still have your... Where did it go?” The body had been right...

“Temporal reintegration. We split; and once you were out that body faded into the time stream.”

“So now you kill me?”

“No there has been enough killing. I’m letting you go.”

“What!” Stitch1 and 2 joined in the chorus as none of them could believe what The Doctor had said.

“I don’t kill... Well I have, but I don’t like to if I can help it. No, I’m letting you go.” He hit a few controls and the door opened on to a sunny beach much like the one they had just left.

“How can I trust you? How do I know that that planet will support me?”

“For the most basic reason of them all: You don’t have a choice. But you do have my word that you can live nearly forever on that planet without harming a single sentient creature.”

“And if I don’t go?”

“Stay in that cage, and I will find a dark little closet to stick you in until the end of time.”

Mr. Smith realized that he had lost. At least on the planet he had the chance of a ship wandering by. “Okay, I’ll take door number one.”

The beach really was rather beautiful. The pink sand and pale green plant life was different, but he could get used to it. He turned around at the sound of The Doctor’s ship dematerializing. There was a note in it’s place. He hovered over the note. “Welcome to your closet. Goodbye. Oh, and look up!” He looked up into the sky and spotted a tiny swirl that looked like a proto-nebula. Only why did it have a black dot... in... the... center... Mr. Smith floated there over and screamed at the heavens. No ship would dare land on a planet this close to a blackhole. And this far enough away he probably had millennia before the planet was eaten by the system’s deadly neighbor. As the gravity of the situation hit him, he realized what countless other opponents of The Doctor come to realize eventually. He had never had a chance.

The Doctor looked at Stitch1. “You know what to do?”

“Yes.”

The Doctor and Stitch2 walked out of the TARDIS and watched it vanish. Stitch felt better once his other self was gone, but he had wished that he could have spent some time with him1. “We ready?”

They walked back in the rain, but it seemed to be clearing up. The Doctor had grabbed an umbrella with a question mark handle from one of the many hidden closets before they left, but the were still soaked by the time they reached the now burning hotel.

“What happened?”

Lilo was practically bouncing when she spoke; the excitement was even more than her usual level of exuberance. “My mom found a lab, and did you know she can make explosives!” The Doctor looked at Leia and raised his eyebrow.

“Only an incendiary. They were going to start making drugs or something down there.”

“Why didn’t you just call the cops?”

Donny pointed at the burning hall. “Couldn’t... One of the men we shot tonight was the son of a cop we know. And I think we did enough damage to the time line. You are Mr. Bubbles’ friend, aren’t you?”

“Yes. And thanks to you, Stitch, and your daughter, we seem to have saved the world. He wasn’t just making drugs down there. He was going to sell Happiness.”

Lilo looked up at the strangely sad look on The Doctor’s face. “How is that bad?”

“Happiness in unlimited amounts has killed entire worlds, and if used as a weapon could enslave the planet.”

“I don’t get it? I’m happy we saved my parents, and the world. How can he...”

“Image never getting angry, never fighting for what you want....” The Doctor stopped. He forgot that he was talking to a child. “Imagine if you were happy without your parents, or even if you had lost Stitch to that thing?”

The look of utter horror on Lilo’s face was mirrored by Stitch who hugged each other fiercely.

“What about us?” Donny and Leia hugged them as well.

“Yes, what about you....” The Doctor looked out through the breaking storm, and saw the coming dawn. And the familiar sight of the TARDIS. “What about you indeed...”

Nani had run out of anger and tears, and sat next to Cobra Bubbles with a new outlook on life. “I never knew.”

“And I couldn’t tell you. At least not yet. All the leads lead to them dying in that explosion, but it was hushed up by the CIA with UNIT’s help.”

“But if they were all there...” She was interrupted by the TARDIS’ return. She ran over to the blue box and stood in front of it. The door opened and Gantu of all people was the first to exit. She had never seen him so beat up, and that was saying a lot after how badly he had fought with Stitch before. “Gantu?”

“You are part of an amazing family.” He patted her on the shoulder and moved out of the way.

The Doctor was the next to exit. He came over to Nani and held her by the shoulders. “I want you to brace yourself for some unsettling news.” 

Stitch came out of the TARDIS by himself and Nani nearly lost it. “WHERE IS MY SISTER!”

“Well about that, you see....”

“I am going to... to... to... Oh my god!” The Doctor caught her before she fell when Lilo came out of the TARDIS held by her father, and followed by her mother. She recovered just as quickly and shoved him out of the way as she ran into her mother’s arms.

Mr. Bubbles caught The Doctor before he fell. “Ohana, eh?”

“No one gets left behind, or forgotten...” The Doctor felt his hearts soar just seeing the reunion. Maybe he couldn’t save the universe all the time, but it was nice to have little victories once in a while.

 

The End.... Nope!

Two weeks, at least relative to the TARDIS, later the Doctor was in a bay looking at the pods Jumba had entrusted to him. All six hundred and twenty five of them. Jumba had told the doctor that they were failures, but that he just didn’t have the hearts to dispose of them like his old partner had wanted him to. He told the mad scientist that he would find home for them, but where? To be continued... ?


End file.
